Needless to say, many of us in citizen action groups focusing on the environmental kleptocracy that our state’s bureaucracy has become, are upset. The California Dump Truck Owners Association has taken action, and written the following letter to UCLA (full TEXT, click HERE):

The undersigned association directors, company owners and interested parties write to protest the actions taken by UCLA to terminate Dr. James Enstrom as a member of the UCLA research faculty after more than 35 years of exemplary work. We believe that the actions are being taken in retaliation for Dr. Enstrom’s
efforts to expose scientific and professional misconduct by UCLA Faculty members, including Dr. John Froines and Mary Nichols. Both brought on criticism of UCLA because of their misuse of their faculty status and participation in conduct that was unethical while serving the State of California (their appointments due in part to their status as UCLA faculty members). Their conduct involved the cover-up of violations of state statutes by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in its management of a key author of at least two key CARB scientific reports. It is now a fact that CARB head researcher, Hien T. Tran fraudulently represented that he had a PhD. We know that Dr. Froines and Mrs. Nichols knew of Dr. Enstrom’s participation in efforts by citizens groups to uncover the scandals, and the timing of these actions
to lay off Dr. Enstrom by UCLA is no coincidence. Mr. Skip Brown alerted UCLA administrators of these faculty members unethical actions in 2009, to no avail (see attached Delta letter of November 13, 2009).

In addition, Dr. Enstrom’s extensive studies showing no deadly effects of diesel PM2.5 (specific to Californians) refute the stated positions of other professors at the UCLA Department of Environmental Health Sciences (EHS), namely Drs. Jackson and Winer along with SPH Dean Linda Rosenstock (http://www.arb.ca.gov/lists/truckbus08/426-public-health-letter–truck-and-bus-rule-dec-2008.pdf). UCLA is now involved in retaliation against a long-term, honorable member of the faculty in order to protect, cover up or intimidate (or all three).
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This matter is a public matter, since it has the smell of retaliation against Dr. Enstrom for exposing UCLA faculty for misconduct and revealing a serious and continuing problem of UCLA looking away from misconduct. CARB and CA EPA have provided UCLA and UC with tens of millions of grant research dollars over the years and these campuses have returned political correct conclusions, justifying onerous CARB regulations. These draconian Regulations command the destruction of personal property; the resulting actions will guarantee that California will not recover from its current financial debacle.

We ask you to rescind the dismissal of Dr. Enstrom, as we refuse to consider it a justifiable “non reappointment.” Please be mindful that we are men of experience and we know retaliation when we see it. Dr. Enstrom is not a popular person at UCLA in the faculty lounges where the consensus rules, but many scientists have been scorned and vilified for holding a minority position that was eventually vindicated. Dr. Enstrom’s receipt of notice of acceptance for the paper, “Criteria Pollutants and Mortality in the NIHAARP Diet and Health Study Cohort,” by the Health Effects Institute (July 6, 2010) speaks favorably of his status and continued excellent scientific efforts and peer approval in his area of expertise, even if he has suffered from a great deal of intolerance at UCLA. His continued position at UCLA will allow him to
complete this important work.

The undersigned individuals are representative of many trade associations and several thousand California business owners who want this matter promptly and fairly resolved in favor of one UCLA faculty member they consider to be an ally in the effort to demand fair treatment by California agencies in these harsh economic times.

For those of you who would like to write UCLA directly to protest this unfair action — especially if your kids are alumni, and the university expects more dollars from you — then here is who and where to write:

And, being the Tea Party activist I am, I always encourage the personal touch of a call or email:

Phone: 310-825-2151
Fax: 310-206-6030
E-mail: chancellor@ucla.edu

I have been working with Scott Watson a bit on this matter, and earlier he had prepared a wonderful essay on Diesel-gate, which I will share with you now. Scott is promising to update me on the situation with Dr. Enstrom shortly.

Yes admittedly over dramatic but are we witnessing the death of real science? You remember like I do from grade school that science was supposed to be a bastion of truth. The scientist develops a theory and then sets about through experimentation to either prove or disprove their theory. It never seemed to me that it was open to interpretation. It was supposed to contain no ambiguity or interpretation, no room for a hunch or gut feel or the hairs on your neck standing up or little angels or devils on your shoulder questioning you. It was supposed to be one of the last frontiers of truth…so much so that to prove the theory one had to be able to replicate the experiments over and over again because that was the objective…scientific FACT.

Well it appears that I have bee naive and will have to file science along with the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny….enduring fairy tales that make you feel warn and fuzzy but have no basis in fact.

I have often wondered why it is that science has so much debate and it seems patently obvious now…it’s money. Research money….the life blood of any scientific research organization. But we also have just recently watched the discussion in Copenhagen where we have witnessed walk outs by the poor countries against the rich countries. The poor countries agree that everyone needs to take action against global warming but for the poor countries to be able to participate they need one thing….money from the rich countries. Now perhaps I am a hopeless cynic but consider this for a moment. Is it within the realm of possibility that a country such as Somalia of Gabon of Fiji or Guyana could pledge to fight the global warning fight along with the rest off the world…happily accepting their several million dollars to do their part to combat global warming only to suddenly not have enough funding and to need more money because the last money they were given has disappeared or been exhausted according to their claims?

Say it ain’t so…Dieselgate?

So we live in an era off science cooking the data to prove whatever the highest bidder wants to make into a certainty. Science is now about the money and inherently corrupted. It also seems that we can no longer leave these academics to police them because there is too much money in it. Now we, as members of the laymen populous now have to begin policing the science so that we can have some faith that what is determined is for real instead of some buy off. We have no choice in this any longer. Just like police forces or the military, there is the feeling that unless they are watched by the regular people, that they will always protect themselves and must be monitored. Apparently that is now the model of practicality – don’t let an organization police itself because they are inherently corrupt – so let’s get together a group of people that we will charge with watching them. And why is this the case….because we ….the mindless sheep populous are the ones that ultimately have to pay for the follies of this science.

That is right, we all pay for the cost of these moves by our supposed “protectors” to help protect us from ourselves, but of course it is less popular is we all have to actually pay directly so whom better to shove the regulation onto but business. And yes. We all ultimately pay for is in the goods and services as a hidden tax on all of us.

But let’s bring this theory back to the State of California and we have our own examples of the corruption of science…..what I am now branding as “Dieselgate”…

Never mind that California has a record unemployment rate but the Air Resources Board is in the middle of taxing small business and therefore consumers via the diesel regulations that are being enacted. Never mind that the lead scientist who’s name shows on the report falsified his PHD to get the position he did in handling this important regulation. Never mind that the data was skewed and that the peer review process that the ARB is supposed to be administering is a joke.

Yes, the peer review process is another tool of the scientific community used to check their work before publishing it. The idea is that the report or finding before publishing is shared with a group of peer scientists that review the work to offer an opinion as to the scientific value and validity of the entire exercise.

Yet we have a problem here as well under CARB. It seems that CARB s so busy burying business under arcane regulations that they have failed to properly follow the rules of the peer review appointments – resulting in peer review scientists that are on the peer review committee unfairly ort illegally. But honestly, who needs to worry about things like rules when the intent is not to have any real scientific review at all, but instead a rubber stamp of what has already been concluded in the report? Of course the review doesn’t matter when you can buy the conclusion you want but it actually making the existence of CARB self-perpetuating. Who could imagine that a state department would actually justify its own existence and value by concluding that the regulations necessary are vital to the state of California? Gosh! What a surprise that is…I liken it to some of my children trying to justify an increase in weekly allowance and then asking the other children is the report of why they should get more allowance was valid.

I for one am disgusted with the whole thing. Now we the layman’s need to police these run away rouge agencies to make sure that we are not getting a rotten Red Herring slipped into the process while no one is looking. And this has lead to a theory of my own developed in countless hours on the soccer field as a referee and equally as many hours on the baseball diamond as an umpire. If both sides of teams and spectators at any game leave equally unsatisfied after the outcome of the game – it was probably a fair game buy the officials. So let’s take all of the data and assumptions that are used in these 2.5PM diesel regulations (and any other for that matter) models to “protect” us – lets all average them to the middle. That way no one can skew the science until such time that they figure out that they have to skew the possibilities to get the outcome they want.

For example the diesel regulations are said to reduce “premature death by 3,900” per year. Okay fair enough…….we all treat life with respect and this is a good thing. But think about this for a moment. Premature death. What the heck is premature death? By virtue of the phrase its simple enough to decide that it is 3900 deaths that otherwise would not have taken place. Okay….so how long is their life extended? Well, we don’t have an answer for that. But if you think about the term, it seems obvious to me that it is purposely constructed to resonate with an uneducated public. Saving people from premature death is a good thing. But it really doesn’t mean anything other than in theory. We all have heard that life expectancy in the US stands at 78.1 years in the US and it is 77.9 in the state of California[1] for a person born today but what about the people that die in traffic accidents? A quick search on Google says that in 2006 there we a total of 4,195 deaths by traffic accidents per year in the State of California. I would consider those to be “premature deaths” all be it in another category I suppose. But the next question is how many of those that dies in traffic accidents would have otherwise died from premature death from 2.5PM? I don’t have a clue but I am sure there is a statistician that could come up with a figure somewhere. So since I can’t trust science to calculate the difference for me – we will attempt to do it ourselves. The difference nationally and in California is 0.2 years of life or 73 days out of 365 in the course of a year. So is this a fair number? Well it is for my purposes of evaluation so let’s say that those 3,990 people all would have averaged an increase of life – had they not lived in California of 73 days. So it would seem reasonable to say that we could have extended those 3,990 lives by 73 days each? If we were able to do that then we would equal the national average….but at what price?

Estimates of cost range from 4.5 Billion dollars per year up to 20 billion a year for the cost of these diesel regulations. So let’s apply my own theory and say that we will take an average number of $12.25 billion dollars per year. That comes out to $3,070,175.44 per each of the 3,990 deaths that CARB is trying to prevent each year. Now, we have to ask the ugly question is a single life extended by 73 days worth $3.07 million dollars per year or $42,057.20 per day for each of those additional 73 days. I for one will tell you that I don’t think that I am worth that much more, but I consider myself a pragmatist. So then we are tasked with trying to quantify the value of a portion of an individual life and believe it or not, it has been done. I had no idea that statisticians had the models available to quantify the cost of a life and have studied it for purposes of this opinion but I am going to suggest to you that the cost of this debacle is an exercise in futility.

Now I suppose that the first attack from the proponents of the diesel regulation would be that the costs that I have estimated are in total and are spread over say 10 years. Once a truck is converted then one need not spend any additional cash for the remainder of the life of the truck. Okay so we take the savings of life as suggested by the regulation and multiply that times 10 and we now have 39,900 people that are saved over the 10 year period. So back to the costs – $12,250,000,000 and we divide that by 39,000 lives and come up with a cost per person of $307,017.54. Still not worth it in my own circumstances in my opinion.

Now, my final point for those of you ready to drool down your face like I am. Life expectancy for someone born in the United States in 1850 was 38.3 years. In 1900 it was 50.23. In 1950it was 66.31 years in 1990 72.7 years[2] and today as stated earlier it is now 77.9 in California. We have gained an additional 10 years during my lifetime and when is it enough? Surely the horrible 2.5PM that I have lived through should have done me in by now but I can expect to live 10 years longer in my generation than the one before and assumedly, those born today will live even longer so what is it that we are ultimately doing? Trying to preserve life when we have already made incredible gains? And for what? Some footnote for those that somehow believe they are making a difference when that difference – if any is almost imperceptible.

I view this as I do many things….keep the government and it’s supposed “help” the hell out of my life. There are already enough things in my lifetime that I need to work on because of myself let alone have some bureaucrats out there trying to prolong my life by 73 days.

BTW, you’re a bit generous to the eco-fascists in your calculations. Reducing a lifespan by a mere one second counts as a ‘premature death’. Use that in your calculations and you get mind-boggling number$.

Actually, I think some counties in Calif people live longer than the us average. Santa Clara, Orange, San Diego, San Fran, have small black populations, black males tend to live shorter than whites, hispanics or asians in the US. Southern states tend to live shorter than a state like Hawaii which has a high asian population. So, maybe Ca really lives longer than Texas or New York since even with air pollution a lower than average black population.

I think I can respond to this informative article without being called a cool aid drinking, barb-named individual lacking in intelligence ! So much of the global warming hoax that has been forced on the public is just one part of the plan ‘Agenda 21’/Sustainable Development and ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives-sounds sooo benign). The following links are more articulate than I http://www.freedomadvocates.org and http://www.spinpolitico.com

1. The TEA party believes that the Federal government has grown too large.
Huge cuts and even the elimination of whole departments of the federal system is required to bring the behemoth that has become the federal government into line with the vision that was given to us by the framers of the constitution of the United States.

2. The TEA party believes that taxes are too high but would not mind increasing them on a temporary basis if and only if federal spending is reduced drastically.
The increase in taxes would be used to reduce America’s debt only.

3. The TEA party believes that both the Democrats AND the Republicans are to blame for the budget crisis.
The deficit spending must end now. Pork barrel politics and the handout of money to a favored powerful few is going to stop.

4. The TEA party believes that an individual’s rights are not granted by the government.
The government’s place is to protect inalienable rights that every human is born with. The government has no place determining who has rights and who does not.

5. The TEA party is not now, nor has it ever been, racist.
The established media and political powers would like to paint this party with this foul trait in an attempt to dissuade others from joining us. If you believe in the tenants listed here then the TEA party is where you should be and you will be welcomed.

6. The TEA party derives its power from the people and is independent.
The TEA party is not in any way affiliated with Republicans or Democrats. The TEA party derives its power from the people and is independent. The TEA party is feared by the Republican and Democratic parties as well as the established media. This freedom scares the current elite power base; as it should.

7. The TEA party believes in free speech.
The tea party members do not mind being called “tea baggers” and laugh at the name. Free speech is after all a right that is most important to our society. The TEA party believes their best response is the ballot box. See you on Election Day!

8. The TEA party believes in freedom of religion.
This country was and is founded on the basis of freedom to worship as you like. Any attempt to stifle this freedom is repugnant. All religions should be respected with none shown any favor by the government.

9. The TEA party believes that the federal government is over stepping the powers granted to it by the constitution.
The federal government is involved in many practices that belong on the state or local level. The TEA is made up by a wide variety of people who hold that the usual checks and balances that were placed on the federal government by the constitution have been weakened and ignored for too long.

10. The TEA party believes that people should take care of themselves and that local and state level government should assist with necessary welfare where needed.
The TEA party believes that Federal government involvement is appropriate only in larger national issues and local issues should be and are best handled locally.

11. The TEA party believes in the free enterprise capitalist system is the best regulator of the market and creator of jobs.
This is not to say that strong, effective and even handed regulation is not needed to make sure that fraud, corruption or abuse of the system does not take place. The federal government’s regulation of private businesses has become so onerous that its rules need to be revamped and scaled back. Jobs and wealth are created by business, not the government.

12. The TEA party believes that the United States of America is a nation of laws and demands the return of this country to a system of equal justice under the law.
Selective enforcement of the law will not be tolerated. The justice department currently enforces only those laws that the party in power chooses to enforce. This is a disgrace and a gross abuse of power those who have done this should be prosecuted.

13. The TEA party believes in fair trade; not free trade.
Our government has allowed China to manipulate its currency and drain the world’s manufacturing jobs. This is not fair trade. Our government has allowed other countries to pollute and sell their goods are cheaper here where our industry values a clean environment. This is not fair trade. Our government has allowed other countries to use child and slave labor to produce goods. This is not fair trade. Free but unfair trade has drained jobs from the United States.

14. The TEA party name is often portrayed as standing for “Taxed Enough Already”.
That says a lot about the members of this party and what they believe in.

15. The TEA party is for returning to the basic rights and principals that are spelled out in The Constitution of the United States, The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
The politicians in our nation’s capital have been without the checks and balances that are required for a government of, for, and by the people.

16. The TEA party supports a constitutional amendment for term limits on both houses of congress. The lobbyist stranglehold on our government must end. Cronyism and the good old boy network must be broken up. Imposing term limits on congress is the best way to do this.

We have helped Dr. Enstrom get his contract extended until now but he has a hearing April 4, so we are trying to get the word out about his case. Anything those concerned can do to spread the word would be helpful!

[…] way back to the formaldehyde issue I faced and thousands of others in this state as well as the diesel rule under the guise of the California Air Resources Board. I called her office in Washington and told her people that I would like to be on that video and […]